


How To Stop A Hurricane

by magpiesflyinghome



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King, Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aggressive Bullying (Mentioned), Canon Divergence - Hopper Lives, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mentions of The Shining, Panic Attacks, Period-Type Homophobia (Mentioned), Referenced Child Neglect, Richie Tozier Whump, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Slowburn Fix-it, Time Travel, Underage Drinking, Watch out! Richie Got Rocks!, mature language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpiesflyinghome/pseuds/magpiesflyinghome
Summary: Several months after Pennywise's defeat, a middle-aged Richie Tozier has been weighed down in grief. One night he goes to bed and wakes up with an entirely new problem, he isn't in his apartment. He isn't even in the right year, but the worst part is that he is in the body of a kid bearing a striking resemblance to his younger self. He has limited time to find out what exactly got him into this mess, and how he is going to get out of it.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris (Mentioned), Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper, Richie Tozier & Will Byers, Richie Tozier/Eddie Kaspbrak (Unrequited)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 66





	1. Step 1: Check The Radar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It begins.

_A hooded figure stands on the side of a roadway, a birdhouse shaped mailbox to their left and a torn-up couch put out on their right, for someone to take. A cat slinks over the road towards a house across the way, its body moves with the ease of a burglar. It doesn’t break the silence that has fallen over the small suburbs that they are watching. Not even cicadas feel the want to buzz in the distant air like something grabbed them and held them still. Suddenly, a sound breaks through the blanket of silence. A child riding on a bike down the dark road towards a place unknown to the figure. They know what they must do, disappearing with the new wind that blew leaves across the road._

When Richie wakes up, he is enveloped in light. His eyes burn with the sudden sun that is right in his eyes and he tries to desperately recover. He keeps his eyes closed and goes to reach for his phone and he hits a wall. The set routine of checking his phone, putting on his glasses, and mourning the love of his life is now disrupted by the fact that there is a wall where his nightstand should be. He decides to brace for the bright light of the room and open his eyes to see what the _hell_ is going on. There is a wall about twenty inches from his face and it’s not the color it should be. The new apartment he lives in has these ugly ass lime green walls with chipped paint at every corner. The wall he faces right now is a darker red and looks as pristine as if it was just painted the day before.

He blinks in confusion and decides to turn his head to the ceiling, and it’s odd. He can see the ceiling without his glasses. The optometrist had told him when he was a kid that he wouldn’t be able to see up to his ceiling without his glasses the rest of his life. So, the fact he can see the ugly ass popcorned ceiling means that something is very, very _wrong_. He sits up and looks at the situation that he got himself into somehow. The room around him is absolutely covered in posters of movies and comics, so at least he wouldn’t be completely out of his depth if this is somehow a weird scenario where a fan kidnapped him and somehow gave him eye surgery. _Richie, focus_. There is a desk right next to the bed and it is neat and organized with some papers hastily thrown everywhere. An archaic-looking set comprised of a digital watch and walkie-talkie sit on the desk, and he wonders if this is a side effect of defeating the crabby clown. He just hopes he has amnesia or something, it would be much easier.

A resounding thought that fills his head is that this place is _too_ nice for him. He never grew up in luxury but he was given things he needed, even if they were hand-me-downs from his dad and uncles. The desk and dresser are made of very nice wood and don’t look taped together like his furniture throughout his childhood. Even his apartment in Los Angeles looked too good for him. There is a closet that looks organized and well-cared for, like someone actually wants to dress the way they do and take care of it. Or maybe somebody makes them take care of it? He doesn’t know, this is just a lot to take in.

He can’t get any other thought through his brain before there are three light knocks on the door. Richie doesn’t know why but he tenses up, an instinct he hasn’t had since he was a kid. A woman sticks her head into the room, and she looks like Stan’s mom without the perm. When she looks at him, she smiles and Richie is terrified of what to do, but luckily, she interrupts, “Mike, I let you sleep as long as I could, but you’re going to have to join the general populace sometime today, and not in pajamas, mister.” Her voice is light, sweet like a mother should sound. He doesn’t know what to say but his hand is shaking, and he doesn’t know what’s going on. **_Where_** _is he? **Who** is he? _

Instead of voicing his questions aloud he just swallows and nods. She continues, “And I have a sandwich on the table with your name on it,” she blows him a kiss before leaving the room. Her footsteps fall lightly on the floorboards as she walks towards somewhere. _Okay, okay, okay. He can do this._ He takes a sigh of relief before deciding to follow her advice, he needs to get changed. He can’t just walk around in the stained shirt and pajama pants that he is currently wearing. He rifles through the drawers with his small hands— _did he forget to mention that he has hands the size of a pork chop? —_ and finds a big, ratty sweater with a t-shirt of equal disrepair. The pants were easy, just a normal pair of jeans that look way too clean for him. They must have a functioning laundry system instead of the life motto of the Toziers— “wear it until the threads break with minimal wash” — which was only washing clothes every month or so until they were more sweat than fabric. Eddie was disgusted when first found out and started to sneak in Richie’s laundry into his loads at home. A smile makes its way onto his face, **_no_** , _Richie, focus_.

When he quickly changes without looking at anything, because who knows what the fuck is happening. The pajamas are thrown into the hamper and he searches for socks. Richie doesn’t like to admit it, but clothing was always a tough subject for him as a kid, he never got the choice. His friends were usually taken to the downtown shopping district (which wasn’t big but still gave options) and given new clothes that they could wear after growing. Richie knew as a kid he was jealous that his friends could do things like that, they could be their own person. His mom forced him to look like every man in her life and then treated him like them. She ignored him until there was something she wanted. Memory lane is _wonderful_ when looking for a pair of socks, so he takes out a random two from the drawer and sits on the bed. His hands shake as he tries to put them on, and it takes a couple tries to get them straight.

The small lineup of shoes in front of the closet was full of somewhat scuffed but taken care of shoes, and he decides that the beat-up sneakers on the edge would be a good idea, just in case. You never know when you are going to have to run from a _psychotic_ ex-bully who broke free from an asylum, _or_ a killer alien clown. Both of those shouldn’t be mutually inclusive in his mind, but they are, and it just proves that life is a sick joke played on him by that damn _turtle_.

He stands up and decides that he is ready enough to at least find out where the hell he is. The walk down the stairs is halted by him seeing his reflection in a framed family photo. _Holy shit_. It’s, sans glasses, thirteen-year-old him staring back at Richie. _Holy fuck_. _What in the actual hell?_ His hair is a mess of curls and his eyes are wide. There must be an explanation for something as disconcerting as replacing a version of your thirteen-year-old self. This may be a different kid from his younger self, it obviously looks so. His mind is somehow in this kid’s body and he keeps staring at the family portrait. This kid looks happy, not stressed to the point of _complete clown breakdown_. He probably won’t grow up to fake a career and have a mental breakdown on stage when being reminded of the childhood that he somehow forgot. His legs feel like lead, _shit_. He forces himself down every step to make sure he gets downstairs in one piece before he completely unravels. The house screams peak eighties décor and at least it’s a situation he can _now_ vividly remember, so everything won’t be as terrifying as it could’ve been.

Richie reaches the floor and sees a table tucked a little into another room and he notices a sandwich on a plate for him. At least the woman wasn’t lying about the sandwich, so he sits down at the place and takes small bites out of it. He doesn’t know what to trust right now. When he finishes it, he waits for anything to happen to him, nothing does. _Good_.

It gives him time to look around the house he currently resides in. Family portraits and needlepoint cover the walls in a homey manner, while the couches sit close together with throw blankets covering partial of the bottom cushions. There is a nice recliner that sits opposite of the couches and seems to be clean and well-worn. A young child is playing in the corner with a group of blocks and it’s quiet. Richie feels on edge, quiet is _bad_ , it usually means something is going to happen. He was so caught up in the fear he didn’t realize the woman walked back into the room with a sippy cup full of juice and a book in her hands. He jumps when she walks into view and he has to put his hand on his chest to calm his erratic heartbeats. The kid is given the sippy cup and she turns and finds Mike sitting at the table with an empty plate.

He feels awkward so he fidgets with his hands, and she moves to sit down at one of the chairs. She looks tired and he feels that she is overall contributing to the stability of this family. _How do you tell a woman that you aren’t her son, but just a forty-year-old who is somehow possessing him with no possible way to figure out the answer?_ He wrings his hands while she asks him what his plans are for the afternoon, he makes the excuse of the arcade and is delighted to find out that there is an arcade in town. _Perfect_. The bittersweet memory of the summer of eighty-nine flashed through his head and he decides that he should actually stay _far away_ from it. Who knows what evil lurks there, whether it be a repeat clown or just homophobia. At least, he hopes, there isn’t a Paul Bunyan statue in the town center. When he gets up to go and leave, she kisses him on the forehead and tells him to be home by six-thirty. He nods and says goodbye to her while exiting through the front door.

The lawn in front of him is well-kept and green, the kind of green you only see in the grass commercials with the fancy quack fertilizers that are _somehow_ a popular thing in the two-thousands? A nice-looking bike sits on the lawn next to the lamppost. It looks like _Silver_ , but a lot sleeker. He doesn’t know what to do when he shifts it to stand next to him. The bike is about half his height and it has a “well-loved” look to it from the peeling stickers to the fact that there is a brand-new track on some of the wheels. He hops onto the bike with a scream of, “ _Hi-Yo Silver_!” and rides with the wind. He let out a laugh at how childish he was acting; nothing can replace _Silver_. Bill loved that old bike to bits. The edge of town is very easy to see so that’s his first order of business is to find a welcome sign. Since there are only one entrance and exit it’s not that hard to find at least one of the signs stating the exact location. Which was true, it only took him a couple of minutes of biking to find one of them. When reading the sign, the only thing he could say was an involuntary, “ _Shit_.” He is in Hawkins, Indiana. _Fucking Indiana_.

The signs only help him with one of his objectives and now he is going to have to find something dated. The newspaper would be his best try, maybe the kid he is currently inhabiting has anything with a year. He leaves the signs and starts to bike around randomly until he ends up on a path that leads further into the woods. Richie knows that he really shouldn’t take the kid’s body into the woods, but at least he has a giant metal object to throw at anyone. So, he continues further into the maze of trees until the path breaks into a quarry. He lets out a laugh at the fact that apparently quarries are popular in small-town America. There isn’t a lot of water covering the body so he can’t jump in without dying, but the ledges that are surrounding the rushing water look cool. He sits on the ledge and watches the water rush through the rock.

The sound is so familiar it feels like he is transported back to Derry, their hug while he sobbed into the water about the love of his life being skewered like a piece of chicken. The day they all jumped into the water and he held Eddie’s hand because the jackass was too scared to jump alone. Good memories laced with red balloons and the cackling of a bitch-ass clown. Do they even exist here? Does _he_ exist here? Maybe he was transported somewhere that the Loser Club doesn’t exist, maybe Pennywise doesn’t exist here. A frantic need sparks in his heart when he realizes that he needs to know if they exist here or not. He quickly gets up and rides the bike, _Silver 2: Electric Boogaloo_ , towards the house he came from. His heart keeps beating in his ears and he just needs to know if they are okay here. When he pulls up there is a car parked in the driveway and he hesitates towards the house. The door is unlocked and he enters, he braces for the worst. The time police, the feds, his dad, _the fucking clown_. Maybe all four would meet up to discuss his demise before he arrived and jump him once he entered the house. Instead of some of his worst fears standing in front of him he sees a man in work clothes already passed out in the recliner and he lets out a sigh of relief.

The little kid has been moved somewhere else because he can’t hear her, but he still keeps his footsteps light as he goes to inch towards the stairs. His action is amplified when the step he puts his foot on a step and it creaked so loud he is pretty sure you could hear it from Derry. “Mike, is that you?” The woman asks from the kitchen and he takes a breath. “Yeah, it’s me,” he says, trying to sound as casual as he could. She is peeking out from the small wall splitting the kitchen and living room and smiles at him. “You’re back early,” she smiles. “Oh, uh, yeah, I ran out of tokens,” the lie technically wasn’t that dishonest, he really didn’t have the tokens (read: balls) to go into the arcade in the first place. He lets out a shaky laugh that should’ve meant “look at the same old quirky me” but really sounds like “I’m in danger and won’t tell you why,” so did she actually believe him? It was beyond him at this point.

She asked him if he could set the table because ‘Nancy’ is going to be late. He nods his head and follows her to the table and he desperately tries to set up the plates the way he saw at Stan’s house when they had his extended family over. It looks semi-passable and he disappears to ‘his’ room upstairs so he can mentally prepare himself for the plan he wants to execute later that night. He lays on the bed and thinks about it, the worst thing he can get out of this situation is finding out that he is somehow a simulation and what happened with Pennywise was a weird-ass Mysterio-type fight. Never mind, that thought only makes it worse to worry about. He needs to find a distraction from all of the thoughts and scenarios running through his brain so he’ll either go through the endless comics shoved on the bookshelf in the corner or find some sort of calendar.

There is a backpack that is hanging off the chair sitting at the desk, so he grabs it and empties it out onto the bed. Multiple folders and notebooks are spread around with pencils interlaced between loose-leaf papers onto the duvet. The beat-up notebooks house the notes for what seems to be the whole school year and Richie is the luckiest bastard to live because the notes have a small date inscribed next to the label. The latest one states that it is currently the May of Nineteen-Eighty-Six. So, 1. Fuck, and 2. _Fuck_.

While freaking out over the date he found a small scrawled list of homework assignments that kid apparently had to have done by the next school day, and since Richie has no idea when the fuck that is, he decides to help the kid out. If he’s going to be hijacking the kid’s body for a while, he might as well make sure he isn’t in trouble with his teachers. It’s the least he can do. So, Richie grabs the papers on the list and sits down at the desk with a pencil in his hand. Turns out the homework was a good distraction from his current flurry of thoughts because he didn’t realize that time passed until there is a knock on the door. He flinches but turns around nonetheless, the woman is poking her head into the room and smiles. “Come down for dinner, Mike,” she leaves the door ajar and he puts the pencil on the desk. The walk down the stairs was overshadowed with the thoughts that maybe Richie should have gone to college, maybe he would’ve done something with his life like Ben, Bill, or Bev. He hopes the kid moves on from this weird fever dream time of his life and makes a difference. When he goes home, he should look into the kid when he gets back, if he does, _go back_.

The table is almost full of people when he gets down, the only seat not taken being his own. A college-age girl sits to his right and she must be an older sibling, probably the ‘Nancy’ that the woman mentioned. They pass around the dishes in the middle of the table around to each other so that everyone gets some of the food. Richie doesn’t remember the last time he ever had a cooked meal, maybe at the townhouse? Maybe at Stan’s Bar Mitzvah? Maybe the one time he and Eddie had a sleepover while Ms. K was at an all-night book club meeting? The fact that Richie can’t remember probably means many things, and none of them are exactly positive. He just lets himself dig in and ignore the fact it’s a bland eighties homemade meal and the fact that right now he has to act like a kid. The family banter in this household is very cold and the usual, “how was your day, dear?” so that really proves that Richie is out of his depth while dealing with this whole situation. He knows how to beat a bitch-ass clown while having a mental breakdown, but he cannot do small talk to save his life.

The good thing is he can lie about what he did at the arcade, about a broken machine and beating a score on a machine that they wouldn’t know about because they don’t seem the type to go into an arcade. He finishes his food first and asks to be excused, and he can leave if he cleans his plate and put it on the drying rack. Richie nods and moves into the kitchen and he stops. The sink is one of those deep and metal sinks, the type that pervaded the houses of Derry and leads to the sewer system. His grip on the plate loosens because he knows that the clown likes to use the pipes to get to kids, and logically, in his brain, he knows that It’s not here and won’t be awake until eighty-nine. The thing is his heart isn’t rational and it keeps leaking into his brain, scenarios of him trying to clean the plate and some sort of tentacle bursts out and captures him because the clown bitch knows he’s actually in this body. Really, the clown shouldn’t scare him anymore, but the fact It was something that existed in his life means that there has to be much _worse_. There is always going to be more, whether it be something like the clown or something entirely different. No one will be safe _forever_ , and he’s known that since he was a kid.

He braces himself as he gets closer to the sink and places the plate on the bottom. The soap is right next to the faucet knob and he grabs it. Richie was ready for voices the whole entire time that he was cleaning the plate, thankfully he heard nothing. He quickly puts the plate on the rack and rinses the fork. His brain gets really fuzzy as he walks towards the steps and stumbling into ‘his’ room. Richie sits back at the desk and tries to finish the homework and ignore the shaking of his hand. It’s not long before he finished everything, and he still needs a distraction until his plan should go into motion. So, he changes into pajamas and sits down the giant pile of comics on the bed.

It turns out the giant number of comics he tries to read cannot block out his thundering thoughts. He ends up staring at the same page forever while his mind runs through it. If the Losers Club exists here, then Eddie will pick up the phone. He’ll be a cranky little fuck, but he’ll be alive. That means that Stan is still alive and that they’ll all go through the shit of their childhood. Georgie will die, Betty Ripsom will disappear, Patrick Hockstetter will disappear, Henry Bowers will kill his dad. They’ll be tormented by a clown until they decide to beat the shit out of it because why _not_. He’ll fight Bill and get cussed out at the arcade. They’ll move apart, they’ll grow apart and return to fight the clown. They’ll be a member down and be so fucked up that they can’t even return to a normal life. If normal was the fact that his whole life out of Derry was a lie. During the thought tornado, he didn’t even realize that the woman came in and told him goodnight, with a small reply that fell from his lips. It’s dark when he comes to, staring at the same comic page for what feels like hours. It probably was because the clock on his desk reads about five minutes before midnight. If he’s going to do this, he better do it now.

He grabs the walkie on the desk and sneaks past the bedrooms and down the stairs. The phone sits on the wall like a silent wave. It calls him over and begs him to make his call. His shaky hand clips the walkie to the waistband of his shorts, and he reaches for the receiver. The dull sound of a line waiting to be used hits his ear and he uses his other hand to type out the number on the buttons. It starts to ring, and he grips the phone with a vise-like grip and he waits for the phone to connect. The phone crackles to life when it’s answered.

“This is the Kaspbrak residence, Eddie speaking.” The incredibly young version of Eddie speaks, and Richie is horrified because it’s real. All of his fucked-up life is real. He didn’t realize how close he was to the precipice of a mental breakdown until the moment Eddie kept speaking. “Richie this isn’t funny, my mom’s going to wake up and get angry. I swear if this is-” Richie has to interrupt Eddie until he starts to sob onto the phone. “Sorry, wrong number.” The accent he attempted got garbled in the kids underdeveloped vocal cords but at least it won’t sound like him. It'll sound like a dumbass was drunk and typed a wrong number. He hung up by slamming the receiver onto the base of the phone, and he really hopes no one wakes up.

Richie doesn’t know what overcomes him, but he slides down the wall and starts to sob. Eddie is alive. He’ll be okay. They’ll beat the clown in four years, and he’ll tell his mom off and he’ll be good. Then he’ll move to New York and forget him. Forget everything about Derry. Then he’ll spend the rest of his life being told by his mom and his wife that he is nothing but a weak, fragile, and sick man. He’ll take the placebos again; he’ll get addicted to his inhaler again. He’ll believe that Richie is a dirty individual and would never want anything to do with him again if he remembered. He’ll be isolated again and scared and think he’s fine. That the way of living is good for him because that’s all he can remember. He won’t remember the way Richie would throw out the sugar pills and the way that he smuggled medical magazines through his window. He won’t remember running through the Barrens without a care in the world because he was let outside again.

Eddie’ll get into the car accident again when Mike calls. He’ll return to Derry because of the stupid blood oath to come back together and destroy the clown-bitch because things can never go the way of the Losers. They can’t just live in oblivion and die of old age. Not a claw to the middle. Not to the razors hidden under the sink.

He’ll die. He’ll die. _He’ll die_. Eddie is going to get skewered again and it’s going to be Richie’s fault, _again_. Richie will get caught in the deadlights and he’ll be useless to stop Eddie from getting eviscerated by the giant claw. He’ll hold Eddie’s hand until the end and watch him die, _again_.

Grief starts to flood his body as he can’t control the tears falling from his face, _they exist here_. The sobs make his body trembles and he can’t stop himself from hugging his knees to his chest. He wishes that this was a dream, that he’ll wake up in the bed of his childhood home and be told that it wasn’t real. That Pennywise wasn’t real, that growing up wasn’t real, that this situation was his subconscious taunting him with what he could have and how he truly deserves what the beginning was. He'd wake up in his bedroom and run downstairs and bike to Stan’s. They’d go to school and promise each other that they would never stop being friends. Eddie would ride in and argue with him and they’d annoy Bill and Stan until lunch, and they’d be happy. They’d get to move on, _together_. 

Richie doesn’t know how long he was crying but at some point, he felt so exhausted that he couldn’t move. He just laid his head down on his knees and let the rest of the sobs rock him to sleep.

His brain wakes up when he is being lightly shaken awake by someone. Usually, that meant he had overslept and Bev was riling him to wake up. “Just leave me alone, Bevvie,” He whispers and tries to go back to sleep again. It’s not Bev. “Mike, honey, you have school soon. Why don’t you take a shower and get dressed,” the woman’s voice is small and calm like she knows that he is a mess of broken glass inside. He nods his head and gets up to walk to the stairs that are across the room. When he finally gets up the stairs, he passes the older sister and goes into ‘his’ room to grab clothes to change into. Instead of trying to blend in with that the kid would probably wear he decides to say, ‘fuck it’ and grabs clothes he would usually wear. The button-up is still nicer than anything he had as a kid and the t-shirt is on the same level. In the back of the drawer, there are a couple of pairs of shorts and he grabs the ones that have grass stains and heads towards the bathroom.

He opens the door slowly, checking for any sign of Bowers and instead of finding a nicely organized bathroom that has a vanity mirror turned cabinet. He goes to throw the clean clothes on the toilet seat when he sees himself in the mirror. No wonder she suggested a shower. His hair is going out in every direction in a frizzy mass, while his face is the worst part. The only positive is that his eyes aren’t as bloodshot as he thought, so he only looks slightly high. Tear tracts are dried on his face with the caked-on snot and crust that litter the rest of his face. His chin is a mess of drool and shirt indents, which just looks _lovely_.

Richie decides that it’s time to just get over with the shower, so he turns away from the mirror and closes his eyes. It’s the dumbest thing ever but this kid deserves privacy and he owes so much to the kid at this point. He takes the pile of sleep clothes and puts them on the counter that houses the sink. He turns towards the shower and turns on the faucet. Hot water streams from the showerhead and he steps under the stream of hot water. It’s too warm but he doesn’t move to change the temperature. It at least wakes him up enough so that he scrubs the shit out of the kid’s face. There shouldn’t be anything left, and he hopes that there isn’t.

Getting out of the shower was as awkward as getting undressed, so he just dries his legs and arms and tries his best to throw on the clothes. He exits the bathroom with the dirty clothes and wet hair, then makes his way towards ‘his’ room. The dirty clothes go into the hamper and he goes to the sock drawer. He comes out with two different black socks and throws them on his feet before slipping into the old sneakers. He makes sure that all of the school papers are in their right folder and slides it all back into the backpack. It’s light enough for him to throw on his back and head down the stairs for a quick breakfast. The rest of the kid’s family, sans the man, is sitting at the table eating their personal preference. Richie just grabs a bowl of cereal and sits down next to Nancy.

Deep down he really hopes they don’t question why he was crying himself to sleep in the living room next to the phone. He would rather act like this didn’t happen. The bad thing is, he knows they’ll ask. He knows that at least the woman will care if there is something up with him. They notice things like shouts for attention and if he’s been crying recently, and it really makes him want to breakdown. They are a functioning family with a healthy dynamic that isn’t stunted. He shakes as he pours the milk into the bowl and starts to silently eat.

Richie has to will his hand to stop shaking so that they think he is fine, but really it only makes him look more pathetic. He knows this because the woman asks him if he is okay. The answer to that question should be easy but Richie has been living in limbo for a couple of months so the words, “I’m fine,” should come out but they get stuck in his throat. He coughs and is able to get the words out, which makes him look even worse.

The mom looks determined to know what is wrong with the kid, so her eyes tell him to continue. A thing Richie will have to thank the kid for is that tongue moved before Richie could make an excuse, “I had a nightmare, I was talking to El.” Since the answer came easy to him, he can assume that El is a girlfriend of some sort, because the body has a flutter of butterflies at the mention of her name. So, that’s _wonderful_. That interaction is going to be incredibly hard to go through because he is as straight as the Fibonacci sequence.

The woman’s eyes still press for more information, “I went downstairs because I didn’t want to wake everyone up.” He hopes it works until she suggests, “Then why didn’t you go into the basement, honey?” There is no way to hide the way his hand spazzed when she suggested the basement. Many things flashed through his brain that was basically screaming that basements are a goddamn no-go for him. “I, uh, was too tired to move to the basement,” and he knows that it is the worst lie he’s told in his life but right now his mind is screaming to just get the fuck out because she is fucking insane if she is suggesting that he go in a basement. He can tell she is about to say something, so he eats one more bite from his bowl and stands up, “I gotta go, love you. Bye.” He runs to the front door and slams it behind him.

The bike is waiting for him on the lawn and he jumps onto it, the jovial scream of ‘ _Hi-Yo, Silver_ ’ dying on his lips. He doesn’t need to worry about getting to school because the kid’s body knows where to go. Richie hops off the bike and sits down at the steps leading to the doors. The way is a good crutch for him to lean against while the world spins around him. It is apparently too early for any students to show up to school, considering he is the only one at the building. He tries to do Eddie’s breathing exercises before anyone shows up and rips him a new one for crying on the front step of a goddamn middle-school.

The panic is slightly reined in by the time another kid shows up and enters the school. In the next minutes more show up and mill around the lawn and talking. He gets up and walks towards the bike rack and ties a string around one of the tires. His best bet for a quiet place to freak out is the library, which he hopes the school has. Maybe he can actually be useful and find out something about the town and figure out how the fuck to get back home. There probably isn’t anything like Mike’s copy of Buddinger’s “ _A_ _History of old Derry_ ” in the library, considering this doesn’t seem the place to have evil flock to. Or maybe it is, trouble loves small towns.

His feet carry him to the library, and it seems that not even the librarian is in yet, which is lucky for him. The place seems somewhat organized with pieces of paper taped above shelves with genres and letters, so he easily finds the historical nonfiction section. It’s mediocre in size and is full of information on wars and not exactly what Richie needs, but he is able to find one. One book on the history of the town. It’s not even that big, which means it’s a dead-end. He sits down in one of the comfy chairs and reads anyway, he needs a distraction from the growing despair.

The book, he learns, is exactly the thing that Mike and Ben would gush over. It is a comprehensive list of events, the economy, the population, and the social climate of Hawkins, Indiana from the discovery of the town and to about nineteen-seventy-eight. It's a generally average town that has the same origins as most places. It’s normal. No long list of missing kids, no serial killer theories. Just an inadequate sheriff department that only has a couple of officers. They’re probably as awful as the cops in Derry, so he really should stay out of their fucking way.

He jumps when the starting bell rings, cursing himself for spending way too long in there. He runs to the history section and throws the book where he found it and heads out the doors. His feet lead him to his first classroom, and he sits down at the correct chair and swiping a notebook and pencil out of the backpack. The rest of the kids in the class are in separate conversations and he starts to scratch words into the margin of his notebook to ignore the gazes he feels on his back. The teacher walks into the room and wishes everyone a good morning and starts to go through attendance. Richie learns two things: 1) it’s a Wednesday, and 2) that the kid’s last name is Wheeler.

At least the rush of classes is able to distract him from the growing anxiety about the eyes on him and the dread that they know he doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t know how awful the kids are here, so he’d rather not get into a fistfight in a body not his own. There could be another Bowers running around here cutting up kids and jeering at their pain, so he just lays low and ignores any person that looks at him. The quick pace of the day is halted by his lunch period and he isn’t distinctly hungry, so he heads outside to finds a group of kids smoking at the cafeteria doors. Instead of heading back inside and looking for a table to sit at he slides down the wall and picks at his fingernails.

Tobacco makes him think of Bev and their friendship, them bumming cigs off each other and talking about boys because Bev got it. She was the only one besides Stan that knew he was the gayest shit in Derry and she just said that they can gush about any person that catches their eye and gave him the _stupidest_ wink because she saw right through him. She knew exactly who he held affections for— _Jesus-age-Christ_ he sounds like a sappy ass playwright, Bill would be proud—and used it to tease him over their usual drag of nicotine. When she moved, he really hoped she would keep in touch, but Derry Disease is a homophobic bitch. Her letters and phone calls stopped until he tried to call once, and she didn’t recognize his voice.

The bell cuts through his thoughts loudly and he gets up, the others don’t move to go in so he just lets the door slam shut. He looks around the empty cafeteria and continues towards one of the sets of doors leading into the hallway. The crowd of kids runs by him in a flurry and he really wishes that the middle school in Derry had been bigger so that he could stop standing and staring as others rush to class. He braces for the impact on all sides as his feet lead him to his next class and didn’t really pay attention until he fully whammed a kid to the floor with his body. _Shit_. The kid is shorter than him with the eyes of a newborn doe and the hair of a salad bowl. He gets down on his knees to help the kid pick up all of the stuff that flew to the floor. “Sorry,” he mumbles and tries to rush away. “Mike, are you okay?” The kid seems genuinely worried and he really hopes that the flinch didn’t perturb him. He turns to the kid, “Yeah.” He doesn’t know what to do considering he can’t fathom if the kid is a class friend or a friend Mike spends time with the outside of school. His foot taps impatiently because he really wants to leave and not get confronted without any information. “The rest of the party were wondering where you were this morning?” The kid furrows his brows and steps closer to him, and Richie didn’t realize he subconsciously took a step back. They must be his friends; they must be Mike’s friends. They’ll know. They’ll take _one fucking look_ at him and decide that something is up. Does he really want to drag them into whatever cosmic bullshit that this is? God _no_ , they’re kids.

“I left early because my mom was getting on my ass about talking to El,” he really wishes that the kid buys it for now. The small moment between the kid’s shifted facial expressions give him relief until the kid has a glint in his eyes. _Fuck_ , _he knows_. When Richie schools his expression as much as he can, just to seem the least bit genuine, the kid just rolls his eyes with a sigh. “Are you going to be able to make it?”

The fact that Richie’s mind floods with many _different_ ideas of what the kid means he starts to tremble. He has to clench his fist to his side so that the kid can’t see how scared of this conversation he really is. The kid’s eyes are determined but seem to soften when looking at Mike, the kid cares way too much. It was like the sun to Icarus, and this kid was so closed to being burnt and impaled on rocks. This is not what he signed up for at all when he tried to move on, to go through all of his childhood trauma once again but in a place that he only knows about a paragraph of vital information about. He needs to escape, to run from the fact that this kid looks at Mike the same way Richie looked at Eddie their whole entire childhood. The chance to run was interrupted by the kid clarifying, “Y’know the campaign planning?”

The deep breath the left his lungs after finding out it was just another nerdy activity that the kid did for fun. Dungeons & Dragons may be a small safe zone but it doesn’t stop the many images running through his head with the assumption that the kid loves Mike, and that Mike likes him back and how they went about hiding themselves from their whole entire town because no place will accept them when they are together just like—just like the thoughts that raced through Richie’s head when he was a kid and he couldn’t stop thinking about Eddie.

His hand is clamming up with the force he has to use to make it stop, to not reveal to the kid that he was thinking of something else when a meeting was issued. His stomach is fighting itself in emotion that Richie is familiar with, and it doesn’t bode well for anyone. _Fuck_. That _would,_ that would absolutely break his cover. That would show the poor lovesick kid that that love for him will never be okay in the eyes of others until he is old, too old to tell Mike. Too old to tell anyone how he feels without it being made into a crisis. His legs start to buckle and he needs to leave. His mind is screaming at him to run, to run so far away that maybe everyone will forget him and Mike and then he’ll just fade into oblivion.

Oblivion sounds _nice_. He won’t have to worry about returning to his failing career, he won’t have to explain that really, he was going through trauma induce amnesia that made him forget about the place he grew up. The place that turned him from a smiley kid into an _irrevocably fucked up_ trashmouth. A place filled with so much _hate_ that he was only able to find love in six others, kids who looked at the broken glass under his skin and decided that he was worth being around. He can’t thank them enough for it, for sticking around his dumbass long enough that he didn’t end up in the Derry sewer system like the almost thirty kids back when they were thirteen and the dozen that got taken while they met up. He owes _everything_ to them.

Richie knows that spacing out was not a good option when in the middle of a conversation, and he really didn’t mean to but there was so much to think about that he couldn’t stop. The kid is staring at him expectantly, and Richie unclenches his fist. He wipes the sweat on his pant leg and makes up an excuse, “I’m sorry, Will the Wise. I think I’m sick and I don’t want to spread it through the rest of the gang.” He didn’t even know that kid’s name until it left his lips and he just decides to go with it. Will’s eyebrow raises at him and it definitely means that the kid will find him after his last period and have a serious talk, and Richie is _terrified_ of serious conversations. They get too tense and there is no way to escape talking about his feelings and bare his soul to the other person and he doesn’t do that. Richie Tozier is _supposed_ to be the jokester with no brain cells, he isn’t supposed to be serious and genuine. He can’t be because everyone else is so serious, what would he be if he was serious? If he didn’t joke? He’d be _dead_.

Will does not seem to be buying his bullshit, which really should be a good thing because people allowing you to bullshit one-hundred-percent of the time means that you lose yourself, so you need people like Eddie or Will to keep your ass in check. It is completely a bad thing when trying to lie in this situation. They don’t have time to discuss further when a teacher comes into the hall and asks them why they haven’t headed to class already, and they scatter. Will eyes him suspiciously before disappearing down the hallway and Richie walks into one of the boy’s bathrooms and sneaks out the window. If he had time to pause would’ve taken time to puke in one of the stalls, but right now he needs air. Adrenaline is flooding his system as he runs towards the front of the school, and his heart beating in his ears. He gives a shaky departure with a slurred, “ _Hi-Yo, Silver!”_ like it was a goddamn tradition. Maybe it’s a reminder that this isn’t some weird deadlights nightmare that Ben said Bev has.

The good thing about riding through town in the middle of the day is the fact that there isn’t anyone to get in his way as he heads towards the Wheeler household. He’ll have to convince the woman that he is sick and can’t go to school, maybe she won’t make him go to the doctor. Maybe she’ll take his word for it. The better way to go about it was to go to the nurse, but he knows they’d just tell him to suck it up and go back to his last class. He wanted to blow chunks just thinking about being stuck in that Neibolt-Substitute. He’s literally faced his fears and a _fucking alien_ clown, but right now stepping back into that school was as bad as stepping into Eddie’s funeral and being met with confused faces. He arrives at the home on shaky legs and he throws open the unlocked front door. No one is home, and that is the best news he could have right now. He walks up the stairs and into ‘his’ room, then expeditiously having a panic attack on the bed and passing out afterward.


	2. Step 2: Go Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie makes a list, he checks it twice. The library is his destination on a journey to knowledge.

_The same figure appears over a metal bowl. Their reflection is shown in the liquid of indistinguishable color and has multiple herbs and objects floating around the surface. The chants of a garbled language start to get louder as a small wind blows around. A salt circle around the bowl is covered in seed and is slowly protecting the bowl as bubbles start to break through the liquid’s surface. Shards of light fly out of the bowl and in the surrounding room. Nothing was supposed to go wrong until one of the bolts of light shoots into the salt circle and destroys the barrier and sends the liquid onto the spellbook. They grunt and wipe the liquid off their visage and look down at the page. When removing the liquid there is a bad surprise waiting for them at the bottom as there were words that had been covered in the original incantation. They were so **fucked**. _

He wakes up disoriented and tired, but he’s still alive and in Hawkins. Richie groans and turns in the bed to face the wall. The woman knocks and he knows that she’ll ask him about why he is home so early and at least it’s a good segue to him being ‘sick’.

It turns out post-panic attack Richie had convinced her enough that he is sick and shouldn’t go back to school until he feels better. He nods and buries his head back into the pillow. She kisses his forehead and says she’ll make him some soup and grab a hot water bottle, which he lets out a grateful hum in response. He may not be sick, but he feels absolutely obliterated and would rather sleep until the end of time. So, he lets her fawn over him with soup and pajamas and a hot water bottle until she goes to bed.

The thing is after panic attacks, it’s still really hard to breathe. You still function on manual breathing instead of the automatic breathing that your body knows how to do a daily basis. He’s been laying on that bed trying to breathe for hours and so many terrifying scenarios run through his head, what if he fell asleep and stopped breathing? The kid deserved a lot better than passing away this young, so Richie powers through the struggle to breath and stares at the ceiling. It wasn’t a calming thing to look at all, but he could make fun of it in his head. Whoever invented this type of ceiling deserves a complete and verbal takedown on twitter. He’ll make sure it happens himself if he has to, that shit ugly.

It takes into the really early hours of the morning for his breathing to finally return to normal. Richie has absolutely no idea where a flashlight would be but he somehow finds one in the main drawer of the desk. He pulls out one of the school notebooks and writes down that reminder and a few things he needs to do. It really reads like:

He ripped out the list and pushed the notebook onto the desk. The list is short and really it should be flowing with shit he needs to find out but right now he has specific things before he delves into the thousand other things running in his brain. Mike and Ben were good influences on his information-seeking senses because at least he knows he can make progress towards finding out about this town’s deal. The simple can always lead to more complex and pressing issues if everything as connected as it _usually_ is. He folds up the list and hides it under the walkie sitting on the desk.

It wasn’t long before the woman entered the room to drop off a small sandwich and take his temperature. Really the good thing about the hot water bottle is that it kept him a little bit above the normal temperature of most people, ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit—thanks Eds—so she continued to buy the sick excuse. He sits up and nibbles on the sandwich while the woman fusses over everything, it really sets off a warm pit in his stomach because it reminds him of Eddie. Richie knows it’s fucked up that no one exactly took care of him in his childhood, and he was used to it. That was until Eddie hit his most obnoxious stage in middle school and would come over and take care of Richie when he was sick so that it wouldn’t spread. He’d scrub at Richie’s walls in a surgical mask and make him food while quoting medical facts. It really was the first time that Richie realized what it was like to have someone actually _care_ about him. Despite the fact, it was usually filled with Eddie spouting about how he was right that Richie shouldn’t have been playing in _this_ or _that_ , but he still showed up with his gloves and masks and his giggles while Richie was incoherently making jokes from his bed.

Memories turn sour when you realize the person you are remembering is dead and you’ll never get to see them act like that again. The smile that had made its way onto his face was falling and he let it. He rolls over in an attempt to get his brain off of that thought process and run through possible locations to get information. He’ll have to wait until he hears everyone leave the house before he can roam around freely, so he sits still and stares at his list.

The sputter of an old car sounds in the driveway and fades from his hearing capacity. He sneaks downstairs and really hopes there is no one left to question him. The driveway is empty when he peeks through the curtains and lets out a sigh of relief. He sweeps the first floor for any information on the town, on Mike’s friends, and the person who did the ceilings. Really, he should’ve expected to be empty-handed, who keeps important information on the bottom floor? It would be kept in the bedroom or basement-and Richie knows that he should go into the basement. His feet take him to the door.

His hands start to clam up with, the tension growing in his shoulders. Basements are scary places; they are wet and dreary and primetime clown territory. Lightbulbs aren’t enough to show every corner of them, you have to put in giant LEDs and redo the floors. Sometimes even with the place fully covered in light, there are still corners swathed in shadows, because basements are the home to monsters. They are the breeding grounds for childhood fears wrapped up in a conveniently sealed box. You can’t avoid going into them in any sort of home, there will always be something down there that you put in moving day and haven’t had the guts to move upstairs or into a garage. Photo albums, cans of paraffin wax, decorations that spread cheer, the lost memory of your youth hidden in macaroni art and lanyards.

Eyes seem to litter the walls in basements because you will never truly be alone in a one. They watch you and wait for you to realize that something is coming for you. So that you run up the steps in the fastest way possible to reach the light switch and the door, your brain telling you that you have control over the situation because you can finally leave the hellscape below your haven. You won’t even truly have control in a basement, because the monsters under the steps own that place and they own _you_.

They know every secret of yours and will use it against you, whether it be the head of a dead childhood friend with spider legs or your _dirty little secret_ because monsters know everything. They know you failed your best friend; they know you failed your brother; they know you failed your mother; they know you failed the only people who care about you.

The last thing that Georgie Denbrough did before dying, was go into a basement for his brother and grab a can of wax. Any venture into a basement could lead to your demise, could lead to your arm ripped off, or seeing the love of your life die in your arms. Basements are the last thing Richie wants to end up in, but now he has to go. He has to trudge down those steps and look for answers. His shaky hand slowly reaches towards the basement doorknob and seeing his twisted reflection on the surface. It reminds him of funhouse mirrors, like the funhouse that Bill watched a kid die in. The knob is cold in his hand and turns lightly, the door swinging towards him.

Steps lead into darkness and Richie reaches for the light switch next to the door and flicks it on. Two bulbs light up his path down the steps and he has to hold onto the railing for dear life as he ventures further down. The steps creak lightly as he pushes his socked feet further into one of his greatest fears. It turns out the Wheelers think that a basement is a viable living space because the room is covered in furniture and lights with blankets strewn about. A table sits to the right of the stairs and is covered in papers and small figurines. There is a phone attached to the steps and a bookshelf of various books and binders sitting behind everything.

Richie giggles at the blanket fort sitting between the two couches and continues to look around the rest of the room. The jackpot of information is a string holding various polaroid pictures against the wall. He moves one of the chairs over towards the wall and looks at them in the fuzzy light. A group shot sits as the first in the row, a varied group of six kids in front of a giant contraption. It’s not labeled besides a date, so a dead end on the name front. A funny thing is the parallel to his own friend group. The next couple in the row are various pair shots, so he learns that the fusion of Stan and Ben is named Dustin. The girl with ginger hair is named Max, and the really short girl is named El. So maybe El is not a cover, which means there is a lot that Richie needs to think about regarding Will.

The only black kid in the group is named Lucas, and he looks like Mike but way scrawnier. They all look extremely close, with smiles and arms linked. There isn’t much about the kids besides the pictures, so really who are they? What are they like? Are they as naturally inquisitive and stubborn as Will? Would they take one look at him and know right away that he is not their friend? Will they buy any of his bullshit excuses? He shakes his head in an attempt to ignore the growing questions in his mind.

Mike’s friends look good, happy, and confident. The type that hasn’t been carved out by a bully and his lackeys on a daily basis for many, _many_ years. At least the rest of America isn’t as goddamn awful as Derry, Maine. They get to grow up without being called the most heinous things, they get to remember the friends who got them through fucked up hormones. These kids get the best damn experience into adulthood, and Richie wishes that he hadn’t felt cheated. He really shouldn’t because all that awful bullshit gave him friends that would do anything to help him, do anything to make sure he lives another day on this cursed earth. Without Bowers and his bullshit, they would’ve never met Ben or befriended Bev, Mike would’ve been stuck on his farm until death do they part. Richie would’ve grown up and gone to college and made something out of himself.

He would still be alone, though, if Bowers didn’t torment them endlessly. The Losers were happy together, they hid in the clubhouse and joked around. They stuck up for each other when the going got tough and they promised each other to never forget each other when they separated. They never knew the thing that brought them together split them apart and let them fall back into the patterns of their life before their friendship. The clown made them playthings all over again because it knew. It knew what was going to happen afterward and reveled in the fact that it got revenge. **Fuck that clown.**

Richie gets down from the chair and scoots it back towards the table. He ignores the fact that his legs are shaking. The stairs are a lot harder to go back up when you can barely feel anything so he fully hangs onto the rail as he walks himself up to the door. He exits the door and then flicks the switch before closing it. The house is still empty, but Richie really feels like laying down again so he wobbles towards the stairs. He makes it and grabs ahold of the railing. Hoisting himself up the rest of the stairs is still laborious work and when he gets to ‘his’ room he pushes open the door and promptly plops down on the bed.

His eyes droop unceremoniously as he scrambles to get under the covers and ignore the rest of the world. At least he can sleep.

Really, Richie has learned not to jinx himself and this time shouldn’t have been different. When his eyes closed for the final time he wasn’t sent to drowsy town, he was sent to a space that he has never ever thought to exist. The water lapping his feet is as stagnant as it can while he wanders deeply into the area. There is a part of him that wishes this is oblivion, that it’s finally come to claim his soul and to make him leave the living realm. He doesn’t care what happens after death, but he will face it. The black expands in all directions around him, but he can feel a humming. It buzzes around under his skin in a way of telling him something. Now, Richie is not good at Morse code or any code at all, but it pulls him in a direction. His thoughts pull the idea out of thin air that he can conjure someone.

The one person who could make this all better comes to his mind and he closes his eyes, “Please, show me my Eds.” It comes out as a whisper, but it echoes around him. He doesn’t know what he did, but he keeps turning in circles and looking around him. A bed materializes in the distance and he knows that bed. He runs towards it in hopes of seeing the person he has been mourning for months. Distance in the space is weird and it takes him longer than he would’ve liked to run towards it. Fuck supernatural rooms of eternal abyss, he just wants to see Eddie.

Richie stands at the edge of Eddie’s childhood bed, the baby blue sheets a beacon of light in the surrounding dark. The one thing he didn’t expect to see was a younger version of himself cuddled up to Eddie. Eddie was sobbing into his chest and gripping the back of Hawaiian shirt like the younger version of himself was going to disappear. _Huh_ , they started that earlier than he remembers.

A habit that Richie had picked up in his early years was the ability to slip into Eddie’s window without making a sound, it was also aided in the fact he can read Eddie’s emotions like an open book. Whenever Sonia would push herself into her son’s health even more than her usual privacy-infringing ways, Eddie would distance himself from the Losers and scrub his hands until they bled. Richie learned the subtle tells of Eddie on full-route to hypochondriac collapse; Eddie would twitch in class, he would stare out the window, his leg would assault the floor with constant shaking, he avoided lunch and the cafeteria, he avoided Richie. Anything unclean would be shoved aside before Eddie exploded in on himself, sending a radiation cloud of misery to everyone around him.

So, Richie had decided after so many breakdowns that he needed to find Eddie on the verge of collapse and to help edge him off the proverbial cliff. He had booked it to Eddie’s house on his bike and found the correct window. The pebble he threw started a habit, one that Richie really wish he was able to hold up in his adulthood. Eddie let him in and that was the start of their true companionship, and it still hurts to be reminded that he failed Eddie. He turns from the younger version of himself and Eddie and sighs, there is one person he should check in on before trying to find a way to escape.

The mirage of the bed disappears and is replaced by the abyss, and it waits. It knows Richie wants to ask for one more thing, to see someone. “Show me Stan.”

Nothing appears in front of him for what seems like minutes and he thinks that it’s a scam, but he hears words behind him. They are words not meant to make sense to anyone but those reading the Torah, aka the dumb book Stan, carried everywhere in the year of his thirteenth birthday. He turns to look behind him and sees him, the curly-haired bastard that treated him like a brother. The boy is sitting at a desk with books spread out before him, but there is a hidden one on his lap. An encyclopedia of birds in North America.

A sad-looking smile works its way on Richie’s face as he looks at Stan. It offsets the tears falling out of his eyes and the swishing of his feet on the floor of nothing. There isn’t much to contemplate about Stan in this moment, the kid was studying for the sermons while hiding what he really wants to do with his time. Birdwatching always set Stan apart from the others in the group, he was the only one who could actually sit without a distraction in his hands, like Ben and Mike. He could sit in the Barrens for what seems like hours with his binoculars and that encyclopedia. His stern expression made him easy to pick on, but the first option to go to for advice.

Stan was a lovely little shit, and Richie missed him just as much as Eddie.

He turns away from Stan and goes to walk away when something hits him. His shoulders tense and his feet are stuck. It feels like a boundary keeping himself walking forward, maybe he’s being let out of the abyss. _Out from the blue and into the black._

A voice worms its way into his head, the voice of a girl asking him what he is doing here. There isn’t an answer to that question, “I don’t know. I just showed up here.” There isn’t time to answer before he is pulled from the darkness and into the kid’s room. It’s still semi-light outside and his limbs are tangled in the sheets of the bed. That was some fucked up shit and he would rather just forget it for now. Exhaustion is still swimming around his brain, so he rolls into a more comfortable situation under the blankets and attempts to sleep.

His brain buzzes in opposition to falling asleep so he just lets his eyes hover on the darkness in his head. A couple of minutes into this relaxation there is a knock on the door. He doesn’t move or make any sound and waits for whoever is there to just come in already, he wants to sleep away the images of his closest friends and them waiting their sweet ass time to come in is taking away from that. The door opens and the woman speaks, “Mikey, Will is here to drop off your homework.” He groans and stays in his spot if Richie makes any sudden movements Will would be able to, given the chance to, deconstruct. “Aw, poor thing. Just put them on his desk,” she whispers towards Will.

The kid’s light footsteps walk into the room and stop at the desk, and there is the sound of papers behind placed on the desk and the footsteps walk away. “Feel better, Doppelgänger,” his soft voice is laced with suspicion. He gives a lazy wave in response and tries to act like he didn’t just freeze up in fear. The kid leaves into the hallway and is replaced by the woman. She starts to move out the plate and check his temperature when, “Oh honey, are you alright?” He turns his head towards her through bleary-eyes, and he doesn’t know what she is asking him. “You have tears running down your face, sweetie,” and she places her hand on his cheek. Richie flinches, the only times people touched his face were to punch him into a pulp. That’s a lie, Eddie usually touched his face to help him clean up from those people who jacked his shit. Eddie was as gentle as a hypochondriac could be, but he was sweet. This woman mirrored the touch of his Eddie patching him up after a fight with Bowers.

It’s hard not to fall into the old habits of flinching at physical affection, though. She doesn’t hesitate away from him and runs her thumb over his cheek. His hand was convulsing under the pillow, and it itches to push her away from him. People don’t touch the trashmouth, the trashmouth gets up in people’s faces and touches them.

He mumbles out that he had another nightmare, which is exactly what he went through and wants to sleep again. She nods and kisses his forehead, then she sweeps the plate off the desk and exits. Quiet envelops him.

Richie falls asleep before he can think about it again, which he is thankful for.

The morning is bright when he wakes up, the sun shining onto the wall behind him. He rubs his eyes and attempts to sit up. The house sounds quiet for a moment and Richie hopes for the chance to leave without anyone spotting him. His legs are shaky when getting out of the bed, but he uses the desk as support. The clock on the desk reads as a little after two in the afternoon, which is a good time. Most of the school kids will be in the hell building and most townsfolk should be in their homes or at work. He still needs to disguise himself before going outside, because he would rather not get dragged back to the house by his ear.

He heads to the bathroom first. Multiple aspects of a disguise run through his head as he brushes his teeth, and after he places the toothbrush back into the holder he goes to town on the cabinet’s contents. Most of it is makeup and aftershave with household ailment relievers, but he is able to find a dusty pair of specs. The lenses come out easily and he plops them down on his nose. A smile covers his face as the familiar weight of glasses sits on his nose and ears. He tries to place everything back to where it was and slips into one of the other bedrooms.

Nancy’s bedroom is neat and looks like something Bev deserved as a kid, a nice and pristine space with a lock. The wardrobe is packed full of her clothing items and it takes him a couple of minutes before he is able to find the small cluster of shorts and skirts. He grabs them and places them on her bed as he quickly tries on each pair to find one that fits. There is about one that fits his dumbass bony hips, and it’s a pair of disgustingly green athletic shorts. Richie quickly ushers the leftover ones into the wardrobe once more and he finds the parents room and finds a semi-organized closet. He goes straight to the piles of sleep shirts that are shoved behind the work pants. They are all about ten times too big for him, but he grabs one nonetheless.

The outfit makes him look like Eddie, but it almost works for a disguise. He needs something to cover his mop of hair, so that’s how he ends up on a stool in the coat closet near the front door. There is a baseball cap crushed under all of the winter clothes and he slips it on his head. Richie slams up the steps and goes into ‘his’ room, he puts on socks and shoes and grabs his list. He folds it up once more and shoves it into the sock on his right foot. It pokes at his ankle, which he is taking as a reminder of what his plans are for the day.

Walking out the front door solidified the plan in his mind and he walked to the bike. Another, “ _Hi-Yo Silver!_ ” was shouted at the top of his lungs as he rode towards the library. The desolate streets of Hawkins during mid-day remind him of Derry. The streets are always empty besides the bullies and butchers and the children screaming from them and the knives they carried. The houses feel haunted and abandoned, despite being full of people. Nothing bustles here, and nothing bustles in Derry. You’re rich in quiet, in Derry.

There are many reasons Derry is a shithole, but the quiet is one of the ones Richie can’t rectify in his head. When the quiet takes over you can think, and think, and _think_. Too much thought in Derry leads to revelations, and revelations lead to your face being beat into a black and blue mess because someone doesn’t like those revelations. The revelations are sick, dirty, _evil_. Quiet leads to rumors because there isn’t any noise to fill up the silence it’s better to just fill it with whatever you want. Pull your agenda in and over tea-time ruin the reputation of someone just because they looked at you funny one time. Let it fester and there you go, no more silence. You got a ticking time-bomb ready to pop at any moment with rumors and static. It won’t deflate, just continue to grow because the quiet is booming because no one wants to come back.

Or maybe it’s better that no one comes back, who would want to? Who would remember to? The quiet in Derry only festers a hostile environment under the guise of neighborly chitchat and sermons in church. No wonder the brain had physically forgotten when leaving the town line, because who wants to remember that shithole?

The library is a beautiful and rustic building in the center of town. It is tall, probably taller than most of the buildings in downtown Hawkins. The windows are usually shown on older buildings, narrow high peaks and rippled glass. He parks the bike in the bike rack and quickly ties the rope around the wheel, then turns towards the steps. Nerves are building up in the stomach as he stands there, so he decides to buckle up and head forward. Richie pushes the glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose and reaches for the door handle, pulling the heavy wooden door towards him. He slips into the building and is met with a giant room with endless wooden shelves chocked-full of books.

The counter to his left is currently empty and he steps further into his room. The labels are printed slips of paper on small plaques attached to the bookshelves. He continues further into the room and looks around for an archive room, hoping that this town isn’t dumb enough not to save all of the newspaper articles over the last century.

Richie doesn’t like how quiet libraries are, or in particular: this library. His stomach is fighting itself in fear that something is going to jump out at him, and it doesn’t help that it feels eerie. There is something that feels off here like life is shifted slightly. It’s like one of those experiments where you shift everything to the left or right only an inch and your perception goes haywire. He feels like he is going to bump into something that isn’t there or isn’t fully there in the spot that it usually would be. Off-kilter is the correct word for the experience of being in this library. He does reach an archive room and sits down at the microfilm. The monitor attached to the system takes too long, by Richie’s modern technology spoiled standards, to boot up. He goes through the hastily labeled reels of film and starts at the last decade ago.

Newspapers have never, ever been Richie’s thing and they still aren’t. Sitting through at least two months of microfilm reels and Richie feels like he is absolutely going to stab himself in the eyes. Nothing much besides a new science institute and a couple of disappearances of vagrants from around town. He skips ahead a couple of years and hopes to catch the butt end of something, and he still gets nothing. Checking a decade ago was a stupid idea, so he reconfigures the plan to work from the present to at least the beginning of the current decade.

At least there are much more interesting things going backward, considering a mall opened outside of town. There was a death at the fair, a man shot to the stomach and did not receive help before dying in the arms of a friend that went with him. An underlying idea of those men slip into his head and his mind lets Adrian Mellon slink into his brain. He didn’t want to think about him, he knew the kid’s boyfriend. Don was always a reasonable fella, sort of sap when you took the time to listen. He worked hard and wanted to escape Derry. Richie and Don never exactly saw eye to eye sometimes when the kid was running around town, but Richie appreciated the kid’s spirit before it was crushed by a younger Webby and his goons.

Adrian had been a case. Richie had so much jealously for him, for the fact Adrian acted how he was in public. He was out and proud, but a shit-stirrer. That’s why he was thrown down into the canal, that’s why Pennywise took him. Poor bastard never got to leave.

There is nothing of note until he reaches an interesting article about past events, he skimmed the headline but froze when he saw the picture. Will’s face was plastered in the newspaper, the words “Three Year Anniversary of Will Byers Resurrection” combining with the image in his head. What in the absolute fuck happened? The beginning of the article gives him dates to find the newspapers of, three separate dates. Will’s disappearance, his “body”, and his “resurrection”. They all happen within a couple of weeks of each other and it is the most confusing thing to process. He switches the film reel to the first date.

There is little information presented about the situation, besides the fact that Will had disappeared without his bike. A lot of the speculation at the end of the article was that the town had a supposed child napper, so a curfew was set for the children and teenagers of Hawkins. Maybe the sheriff’s department isn’t as useless here as it was in Derry. The question is if it was actually enforced or said to have good press. He shuffles through the others to get to the body announcement.

The same picture of Will pops up in the article and he reads through the article, the body was found in the quarry. It was unidentified but is most likely the kid. _Don’t hold out hope, folks. Child snatchers are ruthless_. Richie puts in the last reel and is met with a photo of Will and two others. They are his family, reads the label at the bottom of the image. He continues the article and learns about him being tucked into a deeper piece of the woods, no recollection of where he was or what happened, and he was free to go from the hospital.

It takes a couple of extra minutes before Richie’s brain completely takes in the information, that Will, that doe-eyed kid, was somehow in a kidnapping scheme. He was taken and left with no recollection of the events, but he still finds time to go to school, to play Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, to be a kid. Richie puts the reels back in the correct slots and tries to stand. His legs fail him and he holds onto the stout wooden chair for balance. He was looking for something, and that was _something_.

There are a thousand explanations running through Richie’s head as he bikes home. None of them are good, and none of them are normal explanations. His brain keeps whirring them on and on, he needs a pragmatic person. He needs a voice of reason to tell him that there should be realistic reasoning for this, that life doesn’t actually revolve around creatures like the dumbass clown. Richie rushes off the bike and enters the house.

The phone still sits on the wall in a wave for attention and Richie runs to it. He picks up the receiver and types out the number. His hands shake as he hears the dull ring. It crinkles to life as the call was picked up, and he really hopes it’s not his parents. “This is Stan Uris of the Uris household,” he hears the young version speak. He doesn’t know what to speak and he just can’t stop shaking. “Richie, I swear to god if this is you running another-”

“Sorry, wrong number,” He whispers over the phone and slams it against the receiver. His legs are about the buckle under him as he stares at the wall, and his mind is trying to calm down while simultaneously running through every single scenario. It’s starting to fry his brain and he just does what he does best: run.

His trips over himself to get upstairs and into ‘his’ room. The worst plan he has ever come up with is formulating in his head and he decides to take it. He unzips the backpack and empties it out on the bed then shoving a sweater and a pair of pants into it. The trip back down the steps is quick because he gets the one underlying thing Richie has wanted the whole time while here: a drink. The fridge has different kinds of drinks, in various numbers. He shifts through the bigger groups and grabs two bottles and one can. While speedily finding a bottle opener in one of the surrounding drawers and tossing it in with the drinks.

The bag jingles as he books it out the back door and towards the bike. He forgoes the victory shout and lets his feet and hands unevenly lead him towards the quarry. The tears mix with the sweat as he tries his hardest to get there as fast as possible before he can’t see past the tears falling down his face. That would result in a car accident and does he want to somehow give Mike a stutter the same way Bill got one? God no. The quarry’s trail comes into view quickly and he hops off the bike to make his wobbly walk to the ledge.


	3. Step 3: Hide Your Loved Ones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nancy knows something is up with Mike. She needs to assemble the party to start this new fight.

_The hooded figure has seen its impact and it won’t be enough. The party will be slowed only momentarily, but that just means they will have to move faster. Holes cannot be awed out quickly when sloppy._

Nancy feels like her brother has been replaced, with what? She hopes she doesn’t find out. Or maybe she does, because he has been odd. More than odd, really. He’s been eliciting behaviors that aren’t his usual, and she knows because she’s kept a list since Tuesday. Her finger can’t point to one thing that would cause her brother to act like this and maybe it’s just that he’s being a teenager. Maybe this is all in her head and she can finally relax for once. The problem with that train of thought is that the last time she thought she could relax she was almost killed by a demodog and Billy. So, her constant state is being on the lookout for anything that could be amiss.

Jonathan seems to find it adorable and tells her so every time they are together, but really, he can see how tired she is. He holds her hand on the gear shift and tells her that she can stop being Princess Leia for five minutes and rest. That usually helps her get more sleep than she has been getting, but right now it hasn’t. Something is up with Mike and she can’t put her finger on what it is.

From what Jonathan had told her, Mike and El have been inseparable since Hopper was discharged from the hospital. There hasn’t been anything on his other friend’s side, from what Steve and Robin have told her. Mike has no reason to be this moody and bereft.

The list isn’t long, so she runs through it once more while driving back to the cabin:

  1. Mike’s using different body language, guarded and he avoids eye contact
  2. Lying about his whereabouts and his actions directly to mom’s face in an obvious way
  3. Ran from a conversation when questioned further
  4. Mom found him asleep next to the phone and he cried



What she just witnessed should be on the list as well but really there is nothing to explain what in the hell she just watched and heard. Nancy had been putting her laundry in the washer, which was in the hallway past the kitchen. The front door had been opened and slammed shut. She was about to call out when she heard the phone in the living room being dialed and the curiosity got the best of her. The phone in the laundry room is small and loosely wired to the wall, but it sufficed for her picking up the call. It was still ringing, so she waited.

The voice that spoke after it picked up was not what she expected, “This is Stan Uris of the Uris household.” The kid sounds only a handful of years older than Holly. “Richie, I swear to god if this is you running another-” Stan ranted until he was cut off by Mike, “Sorry, wrong number.” His voice sounded small. There was something about it that was desperate. There was a crash from the living room and before Nancy could go out and ask Mike if he was okay there were loud footsteps going up the stairs. She snuck out of the laundry room and peeked her head into the living room. The phone was hanging off the base and was beeping at her.

Nancy was going to step foot into the living room when the loud footsteps returned, and she rushed back into the laundry room. Her brother entered the kitchen with his backpack and opened the fridge. His crouch was shaky and uneven as he picked up something from the fridge and ushered it into the backpack before grabbing something from a drawer. “Mike?” She had tried to get his attention, but he didn’t hear her, and he ran out the backdoor. Nancy had run into the living room and watched him bike away from the house, and she had no idea where he was going.

She had looked into the fridge and seen that multiple beers were swiped from the numerous sitting in the fridge and her blood had run cold. What in the heck is Mike going to do with beer? Maybe there was a reason upstairs. There had to be a reason, so she had walked up to Mike’s room and saw that it was a mess of papers and clothes. It looked like Mike had completely upturned his schoolwork and headed out, but there was something off about all of it. His watch and walkie sat still on his desk, they looked barely touched and turned off. Mike never went anywhere without either of the items and they were always on when he had them. She picked up the walkie and was about to walk out of the room when something caught her eye on some of the papers, margins full of thoughts with loose-leaf covered in the same writing. They all talked about something she didn’t understand, and it made her heart beat faster.

Her instincts were correct, this is another monster, but what kind?

She switched the walkie on and gave the signal for a meeting, something is up. The agreed location was the Hopper-Byers cabin, they need to meet quickly. She folded the papers and kept her mental list as she walked her car and started it. That leads to now, she’s driving towards the cabin while going over all of the information in her head. It could easily be turned to a different narrative, but right now what she knows is that Mike sounded different. She crosses paths with some of the kids on her way and pulls into the driveway. The kids pull up and look at her, a question is sitting on Will and she has an idea of what it will be. _Is this about Mike?_ Nancy nods at him before locking the car.

Steve and Robin were the last to show up and sat on the outskirts of the group, while Hopper, Eleven, and Joyce sitting in the middle. Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Max are sharing one couch while Jonathan sits on the arm. They all look at her expectantly and she really doesn’t know how to start. She is about to speak when Lucas interrupts, “Why’d you call us, Nancy?” She closes her mouth for a second and furrows her brows. She opens her mouth again and looks to Will. He nods at her, “Something is up with Mike.” Everyone looks at Will and he clams up. “What do you mean?” Steve interjects, he raises an eyebrow at her.

“There isn’t a good way to explain it, but I think it’s connected to the Upside Down,” she can’t look at the group. Conversations breakthrough the group as she runs through the list again. The only way she’ll have them convinced and ready to look for Mike would be to give them everything. She looks up from the ground and makes eye contact with Joyce. Joyce nods her head and is able to shut the group up. “I have multiple examples that lead me to think it’s something else,” she walks towards the whiteboard hanging on the wall. She raised an eyebrow at Hopper and Joyce asks a question she doesn’t want to say out loud. They both nod at her and she wipes off the chore list.

“I need everyone’s help because he just ran away from home with a bag and alcohol.” Nancy starts off the rest of the meeting, “He isn’t right and we need to figure out what is going on.” That seems to grab everyone’s attention. Nancy fidgets with her hands as she turns to write down all she knows. “I can give everyone a summary of why he’s being weird, but we don’t have time to waste. Whatever is running through its head, it’s not good,” she shakily writes out her list. “Mike is a little shit, don’t deny it. He’s annoying, but right now it’s like he is a completely different person. Usually, Mike is bouncing off the walls at any given moment, ready to swear away his problems. The last couple of days he has been closed off and moody, I would stretch it to say he is currently having a depressive episode. I don’t really know. Has he not really shown interest in the things he usually does?” Her gaze falls to Will and he swallows, there is something. She urges him with her eyes to continue. “He was acting really weird when he went to school this week. On Monday he was fine but after the in-service day he avoided us and lied to me about your mom being angry about him talking to El.” He thinks his next words carefully, “He wasn’t talking to El, though. I would’ve heard them if they had been radioing each other at their usual and past time.” He wrings his hands together.

“I don’t think he’s turned the radio on since Monday? We were making plans on Tuesday and he didn’t pick up at all. When I bumped into him on Wednesday, he started shaking and getting nervous when I was asking him anything. I couldn’t ask him any further because we almost missed the beginning of the period, and when I went to find him his bike was already gone from the rack.” Will takes a breath and looks back down on the floor, there was something he wasn’t telling her, but he’s a private kid and she won’t push. She needs to move onto her second point; Mike lying about his location and his general wellbeing when asked.

“Our mom found Mike next to our living room phone curled up in a ball, and when she woke him up, he looked absolutely wrecked. Like the whole mile of tears and snot. He avoided the questions by saying it was nightmares and that he was calling El and went into the living to not wake us up, which I’m assuming he was not doing,” she paces the floor for a moment, “For some reason, he started getting nervous when my mom mentioned that he should’ve gone into the basement his hand started visibly shaking and he left. I’m guessing that’s why he ditched you guys going to school. The question is: where was he?” Nancy shifts back towards the board, “I know it’s not the much of a reason, but since he lied to Will as well, I’m thinking there is a lot he has been lying about.” Then it hit Nancy _, the arcade_.

“Were any of you at the arcade on Tuesday?” She looks at the kids and watches as Lucas and Max nod their heads. “Mike said he was there, did either of you see him?” There is a resounding no from the pair and there she has her answer: Mike has been lying about everything. Which still gets them nowhere on where he might be or what the hell is going on.

“The bit of information I can provide is what I just watched happen, and the reason I finally called a meeting. I was doing laundry when I heard someone come home and they immediately went to the phone. The phone in the laundry room picks up the other lines so I decided to listen in just in case it was important. I didn’t get much besides a name and the fact that Mike was calling this kid.” She takes a breath before turning back to the board and writing, “Stan Uris”.

Nancy regales the rest of the tale to the group, including the watch and walkie before putting the note papers under magnets. “These words make no sense to me, but I thought it was important to if we have another monster on our hands or not. So, we have to find him and ask him.”

“We’ll have to split up into groups to check every location around town that he might be, and if he isn’t found we can work a system to go farther,” Joyce announces to the group. They all agree and work on the separations. To maximize time efficiency in the groups it’s split: Will, Dustin, and Max to the arcade, Steve and Robin towards downtown, Nancy and Jonathan are checking some of the backwoods with Steve’s nail bat, and Hopper to check out the quarry. Joyce and Eleven are making phone calls to the parents and ask about a sleepover. They all break up and say to signal at any glimpse of the kid. The search party has been initiated and the prey is lying in wait.


	4. Step 4: Grab a Weapon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopper has to deal with the consequences of backwater cops.

_Really, the majestic fuck up they were able to create has been a funny experience. The spell, instead of affecting all of them, it only hit one. The more leader type one is switched with a coward, a coward from a different time. Truly, they fucked up beyond compare and the boss from the other side is unhappy and their grip on the dimension is waning. If they don’t succeed, they will be tormented by a power greater than their own._

Jim hopes for once in his life that the problem was just teenage hormones throwing the kid off balance. That everything else has a reasonable explanation than just this clusterfuck. He gives Joyce an affectionate peck on the temple and squeezes Jane’s shoulders. They didn’t see how nervous he was about this, the last time they fought something he almost died in a secret laboratory. He’d really rather not have a repeat of that.

The ride towards the quarry is full of anxious energy and Jim just hopes he makes it there in one piece. His hands shake and he doesn’t know if he could even handle having a cigarette without pulling over the car just to make sure he doesn’t swerve into a mailbox. The good thing is that he arrives at the path leading to the quarry in one piece, but his hands say another thing. He swings open the door and steps out of the vehicle when the personal walkie on his hip blares to life. “Everyone is allowed to stay over, and Karen believes that Nancy is helping Jonathan with an art project,” Joyce informs everyone over the staticky radio. Whoops break through the radio channels and Jim let out a laugh. He picks up the radio and asks the question that they all want to ask, “Anything on this Stan kid?”

“Nothing in the phonebook, they have to be outta town, we’ll ask Mike when we bring him in,” Joyce says. “It’s more if-” and Jim is interrupted, “ _When_ we find him, Jim.” He just smiles and says a goodbye message before straightening up and walking down that path. The path usually feels very short, but right now it is dragging like a stick in the mud. Jim doesn’t know why he is so nervous, so worried, it may be the fact that the kid has alcohol. Or maybe it’s the terrifying idea that it’s a shapeshifter that has been slowly implementing and cloning itself and the only reason they know is that this one got fucked up. He and Will have been spending _way too much_ time reading conspiracy journals.

The truly unsettling thing about this moment is that around him the nature is so calm like it’s sleeping and shouldn’t be disturbed for many years. He really wants nature to shove it’s sticks up its own ass so they can just find the kid and drag his ass home.

It turns out Jim is going to be the one to drag the kid’s raggedy-ass back home because he finds the kid sitting on the ledge of the quarry. He looks absolutely pulverized as tears roll down his face and his hands won’t stop fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. Jim reaches for his radio before stepping forward, “Found the kid. I’ll try to get his ass in the car.” He clips the walkie to his belt once more and when his foot hits the gravel Mike freezes. All noise that had been coming from his mouth was silenced. His dark eyes sweep a glance at Jim and there is something off about them. They aren’t kind, they are bottomless pits of anger.

“ _Goddamn pigs_ ,” the kid grits in his direction. His eyes dig into Jim with his scrutinizing glare, what the fuck happened to Mike? Jim takes his hands and moves them far away from his belt and looks at the kid once over. He’s in a mangled mess of shorts and a gigantic t-shirt mixed with fake glasses and his beat-up converse. It’s really an odd look on the kid.

“Kid, you need to go home,” Jim presses, and slowly takes a step forward. Mike’s hands grip tighter to the handles of his backpack and he takes a step back. “Why don’t you go be useless somewhere else?” the kid snarls, his eyebrows furrowing and his hands shaking. Jim tries to take a step forward when the kid fucking launches a loogie at him and Jim honestly is so fucking confused. _What in the actual fuck is happening?_ “Kid, what are you talking about?”

A rock is lobbed at his face with almost scary accuracy. He is able to avoid it by stepping to the side. Jim tries to take a walk forward and Mike has another rock in his hand, _Jesus, fuck_ , he needs to calm the kid down. “Will said you weren’t feeling-” he is interrupted by another rock being thrown. “I don’t give a shit what Big Bill said. Leave. Me. The. Fuck. Alone,” He shouts and starts to gather rocks and throw them at Jim. He is able to duck most of the time, but the rocks still hit the edges of his arms or his calf. Jim is completely out of his depth right now, what got into Mike Wheeler and turned him into such an asshat?

Jim is able to get shelter behind one of the giant trees around him and the scuffling sounds of rock hitting bark rings out for a couple more minutes before it completely stops. Jim really doesn’t want to risk looking and getting hit right in the eyes, but the kid’s shaky breaths were absent for a moment, which meant: _the kid ran_. Jim pops around the area and sees the kid’s bike still upturned next to the plateau. The kid didn’t take his bike and he didn’t start running, then where the fuck did he go?

_Oh Jesus, the quarry_. When the idea hit his brain, his thoughts flew around in a flurry to give reasons that the kid could survive the fall. None of them help. Jim inches towards the edge of the ledge and expects to see the kid’s head body on the bottom, but he really sees the kid climbing down the quarry like a goddamn spider-monkey. The kid reaches the bottom of the wall and wades through the rushing water towards the other side.

The rocks on the other side of the quarry prove to not be a struggle for the kid as he bounds up the ledges. Jim has never seen Mike do any sort of physical activity, and even the shit that he hears happens in the gym class wouldn’t prepare him for a quarry wall. Jim knows that he wouldn’t be able to make it, his hands would slip or his foot would hit a patch of loose materials and send them flying. His best option is to regroup with the others and consider using Jane’s abilities to find where the kid ran to. It doesn’t help the guilt that builds in his stomach as he watches the kid run through the brush across the quarry. When the shaggy mess of hair is no longer visible from where he is standing, he sighs. He rubs at his temples before turning to look at the abandoned bike.

He picks up the walkie placed at his hip, “He ran. The little shit somehow spider-monkied his way down and across the quarry. We’ll need El to find him, don’t regroup until we find out his location. Keep an eye out. That’s an order.” Jim places the walkie back onto his hip and picks up the bike. “And what the fuck was he wearing?” He asks himself. There is a slip of paper is next to it, he shifts it over and reads it. Interesting, he walks back to his car with the bike and paper.

_The group is going to find out soon, they can feel it. They haven’t worked fast enough. It will fall around them, crumbling walls._

Joyce is a delight to see in this trying time, so he kisses her forehead when he enters the cabin. They stand there for a moment, just enjoying the peace of the moment before shit hits the fan. Everything in Hawkins is always ready to explode and create another clusterfuck storm that they are going to have to clean up somehow. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that something is going to go wrong, but it already went wrong.

He puts the slip of paper on the board with a magnet. It’s slowly coming together, now they just need some guidance of where to go from there.

Jane is anxiously sitting on the couch and staring at the bandana that Joyce placed on the table. He doesn’t know what to say to her, there are too many ways to mess this up. To make her feel scared to try again. To make her get distracted. They can’t let her get trapped or allow her to trap anyone. The party just needs information on a missing bounty, one being puppeteered by a bigger force. Or maybe it’s just the puppet breaking from its strings. He really wishes he didn’t have to find out, but he _has_ to.

They grab towels and snacks for Jane, to make sure that she is able to replenish herself and not ruin any more clothes. The television is turned on and it fizzes on in the background of Jim’s mind. She holds the bandana in her hand like it will burn her eyes, and he knows she is scared. He is scared too, but they need to know. Jim smiles at her and puts his hand on her shoulder, they’ll do this together. She gives him a small smile in return, and she knows what he means by it. She can do this.

Jim is silent as Jane slips the bandana over her eyes and she starts to search. Her hands slowly start to shake as she returns to her powers, they greet her like an old glove. She slips away from him and Joyce, and she furthers her range from the cabin to the whole town. The static doesn’t feel deafening until her words break it, “Mike?” Jane sounds small, confused, and scared. He looks at Joyce and she looks back. They come to an understanding and brace themselves for the worst because it’s exactly what comes next. “Mike, _please_.”

“Where is he, El?” Joyce whispers, and she hovers over Jane like a safety blanket. “Small...building? Byers? I, I can’t focus. He...” She flinches then starts to hug her knees to her chest. “What is he doing, baby?” Joyce asks, her voice soft and fuzzy. “Mike yelling... he keeps calling me...c-cl-clown?” Her eyebrows furrow under the bandana, “N-names? Clown took? Eddie and Stan? Mike...please,” tears start to run down Jane’s face and her shoulders are shaking. “Eleven, break the connection,” Jim commands. Her shaky hands take off the bandana while Joyce turns off the television. They surround her in a hug while cleaning her up, and Jim has no idea where to go from here.


	5. Step 5: Run Like Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie drinks.

_They feel numb in this limbo. Not fast enough. Need to go. Move. Don’t watch, work. Payment for failure is due for them soon, and maybe it’ll be better for everyone._

Richie was doing just fine until the cop showed up. Running was the only option he had; cops are no good anywhere he goes. Maybe it’s his curse.

The rocks cut into his hands as he went down the wall, but he can’t stop. Many names flash through his head while reaching the bottom and they dissipate when he steps foot into the running water. The current is sharp and fast, but Richie is able to use floating sediment as strongholds as he works his way towards the other side. He scrambles up the other wall and reaches the mossy grass that layers the floor of the woods. Richie is able to stand, and he starts to sprint.

His feet are working on autopilot to a place that doesn’t have a name, or it does, and Richie just doesn’t know it yet. Branches hit his face as he continues through the coniferous overgrowth. Brush hits his ankles in blade-like stings, and he grits his teeth. Richie is bleeding from every orifice and he doesn’t feel the need to care. The quiet whistles of the birds get louder as he works his way further into the canopy. He really wants to tell the birds to suck his ass, _they failed Stan_ and they failed him.

Richie stops for a moment to catch his breath, and he leans against a nearby pine tree. The bark digs into his back like claws. He quickly shifts the backpack onto his chest and opens the big pocket. His hand works its way towards the bottle opener and grabbing one of the bottles. The bottle lets out a muted clink as he opens it. He returns the bottle cap and the opened into the pocket and zips it up. It’s been a while since he drank any sort of alcohol and doing it while in a thirteen-year old’s body is not the best idea. The good thing is that the kid will bounce back while he gets to feel himself die a little more.

His first sip is horrible, and he ends up spitting some of it out while coughing, but he keeps going. The rest of the walk is interspersed with sips of the fermented wheat drink. His metabolism is somewhat off because it takes a lot quicker for him to feel the light buzz. The smile that graces his face is shaky and he knows he’ll be fine. He finishes off the beer with a giant imbibe and he throws it into the backpack. The rest of the way towards his destination is full of his stumbling over roots and changing elevations.

The first thing he sees when his feet stop is a dismantled fort with just the name “Byers” emblazoned on the front. It seems that half of the walls were caved in and the others were covered in debris. Richie threw himself down on the ground next to the half-attached ceiling beam. He plops the bag down next to him and grabs the can. The tab comes up easily and he takes a long sip.

Richie doesn’t know why he finds the situation so funny, but he starts to laugh. Giggling and cackling like he has never heard something so damn funny before. He puts the beer on the ground between his feet and he throws himself onto the ground. The laughter keeps building until he starts to cry. “Oh Eds,” He sniffles, “You’d hate where I’m sitting right now.” The stars shine through the dismantled roof. “Probably get on my ass about tetanus or whatever.” He sighs, “You never got to see how much of a pussy Stan the Man turned out to be,” he sighs, “Doesn’t help that I still miss him.” He sits up and picks up the can. Richie takes a big chug and leans back onto his hand, watching the stars once again. “He sent these letters, yours probably ended up in the trash, but he was explaining about how he was taking himself off the board,” Richie starts to giggle again, “the idiot didn’t realize losing one member meant that the clown bitch decided to take another.” He snorts, taking another sip from the can and letting the tears fall from his eyes.

When Richie goes to take another swig, goosebumps run up his spine. A presence has its eyes on his back, watching. “ _Fuck_ ,” he whispers to himself.

“Mike?” A small voice asks, the words worming themselves into his skull. It sounds like a girl, someone long-forgotten. A kid that was taken before their prime by It. Probably eaten right up, like the poor fucker Eddie Corcoran. He can’t take it in himself to be sad about it, because anger floods through his veins. Nothing ever ends in this fucked up reality.

“Didn’t I tell you to fuck off, you clown,” he hisses and takes another sip from the can. “Mike, _please_ ,” the small voice begs. He huffs, “No, you clowny bitch, you’re not allowed to just pop up where you please. Go. The. Fuck. Away!” Richie stands up and faces the woods behind him. The presence feels stronger in that direction, and it stays.

“Didn’t you already take enough from me?!” He rages, “Yeah, you remember Eds and Mr. Stan Uris, you crabby fuck!” He takes a piece of splintered wood from the structure and lobs it at a tree. It makes a distinct smacking sound as wood meets bark and the sound echoes in the silence. “You took them from me twice, and I don’t need it to happen again! If you want to fuck around with the voices of lost kids, you can take your fucking balloons and shove them so far up your ass that you float!” He takes another angry gulp, the alcohol dripping down his chin. “Isn’t that your thing, asshole?! That we’ll all,” his voice shifts into a perfect representation of the clown, “ _float down here!_ Like that’s totally original you fucking sewer-dwelling crab cake!” He crushes the can in his hand throws the still fizzing object at the back wall of the fort. It clinks and slowly leaks out onto the wood flooring. A sob works its way up to his throat, and he sits down again, hiding his head in his gangly limbs.

The presence was gone, it left after he threw the can. Which is great for him, but bad for whoever is about to get hurt next. He lifts his head and reaches for the backpack, taking out the final beer. Brown glass staring at him under the dark sky, and it takes pity on him. His next attempts at opening it are shaky at best, but he is eventually able to open it. The bottle cap is put in the backpack and he takes a long sip. He places the bottle next to him and he looks up once again to stare at the sky. His body responds to the slight chill of his surroundings, but he ignores it. It’s so quiet besides the late cicadas and grasshoppers.

It’s broken by the sound of footsteps in the distance, and Richie sighs. He flops himself down onto the floor again and ignores the fact it’s most likely a coyote or bears coming to kill him. Not the best place to die, he admits, but it’s better than what he deserves. So, he smiles and waits for the inevitable gnawing on his limbs, _I’m coming, Eds,_ and _I’ll be right there, Stan_. The footsteps continue to get closer to him and he takes a deep breath. His eyes close and cover him in darkness.

“M-Mike, a-are y-you-u o-ok-kay?” A voice asks him, and he snorts in response. “Big Bill, if I was okay do you really think that I would out here, preparing for death by bear or werewolf?” He opens his eyes and looks again at the inky darkness above them. “W-We’re re-really wo-worried, pleas-se come ho-home,” the voice pleads. Richie bursts out laughing, his lungs hurting at the outburst. “My home died the day that clown came back and you know it, Bill. I don’t deserve to have that shit any other way,” he snorts. He shifts up to take another swig of the beer and then rests his forearms on his knees.

“W-W-What d-do yo-you me-mean?” As if Bill doesn’t know, Bill knows exactly what Richie did. Bill knows exactly what he is talking about, and the fact _that fuck_ is playing coy right now pisses him off. He takes a heavy swig, “You know exactly what I mean.”

“I d-don’t,” the voice replies. Richie lets out a gruff yell and leaps to his feet, throwing the bottle at the wall. It shatters against the wood and most of the broken pieces land at his feet. He turns towards the voice, “Don’t fucking lie to me, Bill.”

“I-I-I r-really d-don’t,” the voice whispers. Richie turns away from the voice again and he punches one of the long hanging beams. “Fine! You want me to explain to you how fucked up I am?! Alright! Buckle the fuck up!” He turns back to face the voice, “I don’t deserve a home because I’m the reason they died! The two people I cared about more than anything in the world are dead, because of me!” Richie’s hands move while he speaks, making fluid movements to try and present how fucked this all is. “If I just killed It the goddamn first time, Stan wouldn’t have had to fucking kill himself because he was so scared. You saw Patty at the funeral, she was fucking devastated!” He kicked the wall next to him, “The whole reason Eddie died in that sewer was because of me! Did you forget that jackass decided to save me from the deadlights?! The worst part is I saw it happen before I woke up, I saw him die, Billy. I woke up too late and he got skewered,” he stops for a moment, letting the sobs wrack his body. “Fuck you for thinking I have to explain myself,” he mumbles and sits back down. He hides his head in-between his knees and curls into himself further. Richie didn’t hear the ascent of more footsteps on his position as he fell asleep, the tears slowly leaking out of closed eyelids. Then he’s dead to the world, unable to see the worried expressions of the group he was desperately trying so hard to avoid.

_Instability is interesting to study, the figure finds. Information is truly gained when you lose all inhibitions, and just let the words flow from the mouth. There is something to be said about the transfer, he is a lot more interesting than they first thought. Something else exists on this plane, something that the boss doesn’t know about._

He wishes he didn’t have to wake up, but his eyes open regardless of his wants. When he sits up, he realizes that the place he is currently sitting in is not in the Wheelers household. It’s a small living room that has a giant organized pile of people on the floor. The cop from the quarry is passed out in the recliner across from him. A lot of memories of sleepovers in Mike’s barn surface and he needs to get out. He shifts out of the blankets as quickly as he can, slipping towards the front door and grabbing the pack of cigs and a lighter from the key-bowl and heads towards the front door. A bat that has a multitude of nails bashed into it, and he lets out a snort at it. Bev would be all over that shit, if they had the time to bolt some nails into a bat before beating It a second time, _it would’ve gone differently_.

The small smile that graced his face fell as soon as Bev was mentioned, so he pushed open the front door and stepped out onto the front porch. It wraps around the whole house, but Richie thinks the side that overlooks the woods behind it is his best chance at privacy. The wooden boards underneath his feet creak as he walks further from the front of the house.

He settles down at one of the larger columns of the railing and he opens the pack of cigarettes. His hands are shaking, but he still tries to light it. Right now, he needs any sort of vices and it seems that the _fucking turtle_ is telling him off _now_. He throws the pack to the ground in anger, “Fuckin’ bitch.” He grumbles and places the lighter back onto the railing. Richie leans against his forearms and lets his head hang. Richie mentally scrambles for any of the breathing exercises that he had memorized for Eddie, and only a couple of them come to mind. He tries them, and really, he should’ve known that they were bullshit, they were from his mom’s forgotten issue of Cosmo.

Richie just tries to listen to the nature surrounding him, the tweeting birds and cicadas buzzing. It’s a lot different than Derry or Los Angeles, the heat sits on you like a jacket instead of fizzling out your existence with the hot air. There is also a layer of uncanniness to the town, like the outside doesn’t fully reflect what fucked up shit happens in the center. The feeling nags at his head endlessly, telling him there is something more than what he sees. It is worse in this house, though. Endless waves of that supernatural off-ness radiate from the front door of the house, from the windows, from the backdoor. He itches to leave, to just run from this house to fuck knows where because he knows that it’ll never be over. Richie is about to turn to leave when a voice interrupts him, “Kid.” The cop is stood before him and he flinches. _Fuck_.

He tries to hold it together in front of this chickenshit cop, so he just replies, “What?”

The cop sighs, “What the hell was last night? You could’ve died,” his voice is laced with concern and disappointment. Richie knows he has always been a disappointment to most people, and really this one backwater cop thinking he is a less than average isn’t the worst thing. It’s not like he failed Stan, _again_. He looks the cop in the eye, “It’s nothing, not that you would be able to do anything anyway.” He walks forward and shoves past the cop, making it only a couple of inches before the cop grabbed his forearm. Richie turns his head to look at the cop, “Kid, I’m just trying to help.” The cop gives the face of an earnest small-town guy, and usually, the small-town guy charm would work. Richie’s just been so used to those types burning him off in his childhood. Nothing a bit of dough couldn’t change, earnest to corrupt.

Richie rolls his eyes, “Can’t a guy grieve in peace,” he spat. The cop furrows his brows and doesn’t stop Richie from breaking free of his grip. Richie starts to walk away again.


	6. Step 6: Break the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will wakes up.

_The house holds so much power. The edges are bending to the will of one. It cannot be entered by those unwelcome, or they shall burn at first contact with the bent wood._

Will’s eyes open to a bright light shining through the windows. The couch underneath him is empty and the rest of the Party are asleep on the floor. Hopper isn’t in his recliner and Will is feeling around for the memories of what happened last night. He is met with Mike screaming at him, carrying his limp body to the car and the ride back to the house. Joyce was watching him for any sign of alcohol poisoning all night and the others were hovering over the whiteboard with muffled chatter. Will had wished last night to have an answer, to know what was going on. No one knew what the answer and it was scaring him.

The silence of the living room is interrupted when he hears a yell, “Alright, you clowny bitch, show yourself!” Will scrambles to the window and peaks out onto the porch. Hopper is watching in horror as Mike holds the bat of nails above his shoulders. Mike continues to shout at the trees, waving the bat around. He watches as Mike walks off the porch and slowly onto the yard. The further he walks the less Will can hear of what he says, but it doesn’t seem to be good.

When Mike walks back onto the porch Will feels a breath of relief. Mike places the bat back against the house and that’s when Hopper speaks, “Kid, what the fuck was that?”

Will doesn’t know exactly what Mike would say in response to that, and really that terrifies him. “Showing the little bitch whose boss,” Mike says and smiles crookedly. Hopper looks at him with an eyebrow raised and Mike snickers. “Monsters get intimidated when you show them you aren’t afraid to die. Really twists their panties and makes them fuck up,” he states proudly. Will is wary of the cocksure attitude, but Hopper just sighs. “Kid, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You didn’t feel it?” Mike asks, he looks perturbed. Will wants to help, Mike looks like a deer caught in headlights and Will walks towards the front door. He opens the door and enters the porch. Mike’s back is faced to him, but he knows Mike heard him. “I felt it too,” He lies, looking at Hopper. Hopper looks between the two and sighs, rubbing a hand down his face. “I’ll wake everyone else up, Will watch him,” Hopper walks past them and into the cabin. “I’m not a fucking dog,” Mike grumbles and walks further down the porch. He plops down and sticks his legs through the rails and rests his head against the top.

Will stands a few feet away, awkwardly shifting his feet. There is still something off about Mike that Will can’t place, it feels different. Many questions run through his head, a lot of things he should ask but there is just one that sticks on his tongue.

“Will, just ask the question,” Mike says, turning to look at him. “I can hear the gears churning from here, just ask. The. Question,” Mike stares at him.

Will nods and thinks of the best way to phrase it, Mike feels like a ticking time-bomb and any sort of mess up could make him detonate faster.

“Who are you?” He whispers, bracing for any sort of outrage like Mike usually would react. It’s silent, and he opens his eyes to find Mike staring at him with a dumbfounded look on his face. Then he smiles, a laugh breaking out from his chest and he tips over and lands on the porch. “Well short stack,” he croons, “that’s a long story.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
